One (16 page)

I reached my floor and was completely exhausted, not just from the climb but from the day. I had nothing real to go on just echoes and secrets, lies, hallucinations, dreams and questions. As I turned the knob on the door, a part of me still hoped that somehow I would walk into my home and find my family there. I wished I would find Christine giving me the evil eye asking where I was, but what I walked into was darkness and silence, a far too familiar theme.

I did not bother looking in the kitchen I slowly dragged my body up the stairs toward my room. I stopped in front of my door and turned toward my mother’s room. I felt like I was supposed to go inside so that was what I did. I walked into her room and sat on the edge of her bed staring toward the door. There was something strange about sitting there; it was like a story someone told you and then you lived it.

Then I remembered. I closed my eyes and ran my hands across the bed. I could almost feel my mother’s presence. That night I was concerned about myself, a trip I was to go on. My mother was typing away on her laptop. I was trying to convince her to allow me to go on a trip with my friends. I was invited by… well, what was important was my mother was giving me a hard time. She would just fire off answers without looking up from her laptop, it was, infuriating.

An Unwanted Transition

“
So that’s it then?” I asked/

“
I believe what I said was clear, Timothy.”

My mother’s idea of clear was a yes or no answer followed up by saying her answer was clear. It did not make the least bit of sense.

“
Clear? Yes, it was clear. Was it a fair answer? No.”

“
And what was not fair about it?”

Working with school children my mother was very good at getting people to answer their own questions. If you wanted to know why you were denied something all you had to do was to keep talking to her. She would keep asking your general questions mostly based on what you had asked her and soon you would have your answer.

“
What’s not fair? How about the fact that I’m almost twenty-years old and still have to ask my mother for permission to go on a trip? Do you really think that is fair or even reasonable?”

When my mother wanted to make her point even clearer she would remove her glasses and look you in the eye. It worked on the children she taught and it worked on us as well.

“
I never said you couldn’t go. What I said was that you need to discuss it with your father.”

“
You know if I lived on my own this would not even be a discussion.” I said slightly raising my voice.

I could not say why I had not moved out yet. Maybe it was because I had no job after the incident at Walgreens. Honestly at that point I did not have a defined future anymore. The phone rang allowing me some time to come up with another counterpoint to her one sentence answers. My mother leaned over, picked up the receiver and smiled at me.

“
And when exactly will you be moving out?”

It was not the trip that I was fighting for. Truthfully I do not remember what I was fighting for. What I do remember was the smile on her face quickly fading as the conversation continued.

“
Yes, this is Martha Hayden. And this is?”

When I was fourteen our family planned a trip to Canada. A few days before we were to leave I came down with the flu. My father was ready to cancel the trip, but I begged him not to cancel it. In the end he decided to fly with my sister to Canada and a few days later we would join him. I do not remember why but we ended up having to take a train instead.

What I did not realize was just how much my mother worked not only to plan for the trip, but to care for me as well. She stayed awake with me almost every night and while a few days before we left I was well rested, she was not. We had reached New York and were about to turn in for the night when my stomach began to hurt. I had had this specific pain in my stomach before, it was whenever I felt something was very wrong or something bad was about to happen.

I looked at my mother she was very pale and looked sick. I asked her if she was alright and she could barely answer me, but even so she forced out a smile and told me not to worry and to go to sleep. Something inside told me not to go to sleep and to get help. I called for one of the attendants I told them my mother was sick. She looked embarrassed as they asked her if she was alright. Though she denied feeling ill they decided to stop the train at the next stop, which was Buffalo, New York and called an ambulance.

One the way there I wondered if I had done the right thing. My mother hated going to the doctor and to be taken by ambulance to the hospital was unthinkable. Sitting in that waiting room alone while the hospital officials tried to contact my father was horrible. The doctor came out and told me that my mother had a blood clot and that if I had not said something to the attendant she would have died. I just sat there frozen thinking about how close I was to just falling asleep. Even since then when I felt that pain in my stomach I have made sure not to ignore it.

“
I… I understand…I’ll, we’ll be right there.”

The sound of my mother’s voice and the pain in my stomach told me something horrible had happened. The look in my mother’s eyes I will never forget. They stared blankly ahead; I could see she was scared, but also thinking about what to do next. I could not speak. I did not even know what was said, but I knew it was bad. My mother leaned over to hang up the receiver but she went limp and dropped the receiver to the floor.

I jumped up from the bed and hung up the phone as my mother slowly sat up and just stared out her window. It felt like we sat there in silence forever. I felt my mouth begin to open when she turned around and looked at me. I knew what she was about to say would change our lives forever.

“
Your father…there was an accident. He was taken to Northwestern Hospital. We need… we need to go.”

I was in shock thinking about what happened to dad, what exactly they told her on the phone. Images of sitting in that waiting room came back to me. My mother slowly stood then lost her balance. As I moved to catch her she wrapped her arms around me and began crying. The pain that night was the worst I had ever felt and it was just the beginning.

Secrets

I no longer wanted to be in her room. I stood and saw my mother’s laptop bag sitting next to her nightstand. My thoughts went back to what Christine wrote in her e-mail, about my mother asking her to stay away from me, that and secrets she was to keep. Mom’s laptop was out of power and there was no way to recharge it but I decided to take it with me anyway. I placed it in the bag, but it would not go in all the way. I reached into the bag and pulled out a small digital recorder.

I shined my light on it and I set it to play from the beginning. Though hearing my mother’s voice on the phone recording earlier was painful I wanted to hear her again. I laid back on my mother’s bed as I pressed play on the recorder and looked out the window toward Lake Shore Drive.

“
Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”

It was my mother reading from the bible. I remembered that after she stopped going to Moody church she began holding bible studies with some friends and often studied alone. She would record various passages from the bible and play them back at night. After the verse the phone rang. I could hear talking but it was to quiet to make out, then suddenly it became clear.

“
No, I haven’t told them yet. You don’t understand there is nothing else I can do, we have to sell. I told you, they won’t pay because of…”

A knock at the door interrupted her mid-sentence. I rewound the tape trying to make sense of what my mother was talking about.

“
Mom, may I come in?

It was Ashley’s voice.

“
I’ll call you back, Jackie. Yes, Ashley, come in.”

She was talking to Aunt Jackie and talked about selling something. Jackie was... is... a lawyer and helped us with any legal issues we had. She dealt with everything regarding the death of my father including his estate. Though it was agreed that we would not actively follow the trial of the man who killed him she did keep my mother apprised of major events. There were many times I asked her for information, but it was always very general and vague. At that time I thought the only thing the conversation could be about was money.

“
Mom… I need to speak to you about Timothy.”

“
What is it? Is something wrong? Is he okay?”

My sister talking to my mother about me was not surprising but to hear concern in her voice was. If the secret were about money issues then why would Ashley know about it and not me?

“
Yes…No… I’m not sure, that’s just it, Mom. Today he is okay, but if so then that’s just today. How long will he be okay, what if he…”

“
He will be fine as long as we continue to help him.”

It was just like the night before this all began, with my mother and my sister worrying about me. There was so much going on in my life that I did not pay attention to much at home. Whenever I asked questions they would just give me a non-answer so I stopped asking. If there were a problem money-wise I most likely would not have known about it. Besides tuition, for which I received a partial scholarship, I did not spend much money. If there was a financial problem they could have talked to me about it, but instead they were having private talks about my wellbeing.

“
Are we really helping him, Mom? It doesn’t seem like we are.”

“
Ashley, you need to understand. You remember how he was before, how bad it was. God has helped Timothy, but we must do our part as well. All I want is what is best for you both and if that means…”

The tape went silent. The way they talked about me it was just like what Christine wrote, how she described me. How can everyone look at me and see something so different from what I could see. Even with the issues, I have and the many I discovered since this began it still did not add up to the way they talked about me.

I played the tape over and over hoping to get something more out of it. To have something in your hands that could have given an answer but just created more questions angered me. I wanted to smash the recorder to pieces but instead I took a deep breath and placed the recorder in the bag.

I took the bag into my room and threw it down at the foot of my bed. Normally being in my room, alone in the dark, would bring me comfort, but that night comfort was not what I felt. Outside my balcony, the fires continued to burn from Old Town through to Lincoln Park. All it would take to end everything would be a step over the ledge, but for all I knew it could also take me deeper into the nightmare.

I kept thinking about what Dr. Leafs told me, if I went with his story of my history then perhaps the tape would make sense. The only problem was they talked as if something was wrong and then was corrected. In my dream, or hallucination, or whatever it was I was still in the hospital. No matter which version I used there were still pieces missing.

I slumped down onto my bed it was then that I decided to write down everything that happened including my thoughts. I hoped that by writing everything down I would be able to look back and review what I discovered in the future. I also hopped that it would keep me from going insane.

Everything I had written up to that point was written after that first night. I made a promise to myself that I would not edit or change anything. This record would not just be for me, but for anyone else who may ever read this. If all this were a dream or something else then I would gladly accept that all this work was for nothing just to see my family again.

After documenting everything I could remember my arms were sore from holding the flashlight steady. As I drifted off to sleep on my own I whispered a silent prayer asking if I could wake up in the world I once knew. If God were to choose to hold a grudge against me because I turned my back on him and decided to take me in my sleep I would consider it a mercy killing.

All for Nothing

You would believe that waking up from your sleep with no recollection of your dreams would be a good thing. In the past when I would wake up not knowing if I had dreamt the night before it was just a fleeting curiosity that quickly left my mind. When the nightmares began, I would sometimes awaken drenched in sweat, heard pounding, but without any memory of my dreams. Like the stain of a nightmare, the imprint left on you after waking up in that state and yet remembering nothing was just as horrible.

Similar to the feeling deep inside you when you believe something has happened to someone close to you, the weight left on your soul when you wonder what terrible images you must have experienced that were so damaging that your waking consciousness kept them from you. Those thoughts would stay with me throughout the day plaguing me, that is, until night came.

“
Dad!”

I awoke screaming. I ran to my balcony and upon opening the glass doors, I already knew I was still there. The skies were a dark grey, thick from the smoke of the ongoing fires burning across Old Town and Lincoln Park. I backed away from the patio door and slumped onto my bed. I just laid there staring at the floor. I knew I had dreamt that night, but I could not remember what I was dreaming about. My body felt as if it had been beaten during the night. While my watch told me I had slept for six hours my body felt as if it had been six minutes.